She Had Been Happy Once
by Jack E. Peace
Summary: A story about Kate and her secret past.


Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me.

A/N: So, I was all excited to finally hear what Kate had done but, sadly, I guess we'll never know. Instead, I decided to write a little fic about Kate before the plane crash; this is my idea of what she did and I know it's not the best idea but that's all right. Anyway, please review and enjoy.

She had been happy once. But the she in Kate's mind was a she that she could hardly remember, happy in life she barely knew. Had she ever been happy? Kate found that hard to believe but somehow she knew...

She had been happy once. And staring out at the setting sun, reflecting off the choppy waves of the endless ocean, Kate could taste that happiness on her tongue, like a food that had been eaten years ago and only remember on occasion. She could feel the happiness against her skin, soaking into her like the rays of the sinking sun, reminding her that, years ago, when that some sun had washed upon her she had been happy. The sand beneath her toes was just a further reminder to Kate that, perhaps once upon a time, she had been happy once.

In that once upon a time, Kate could remember her happier self, the part of her that no longer really existed. It was the part of her that she was trying to find again on this island, trying to remember and bring to the surface to show Jack. To show Jack that she had been happy once.

Once she had been a young girl, on a farm -yes, she _did _like farms, not everything she had told that man had been a lie- with the heat against the back of her neck and the sweet scent of dust filling her nostrils. It was the smell of sun-baked dust, of ground packed beneath feet and hooves, mingling with hay and the coming rain; the sort of smell that you wished you could bottle and keep forever.

It was forever ago that Kate had been happy in that life, the happy teenager that sat on a wooden fence in great need of repair but not enough to make anyone break from their normal chores to fix it. And it was upon the highest slat on that broken fence that Kate had watched life unfold before her, smelling the dust and feeling the sun, her fingers wrapped around the splinted wood. Sometimes, she would dig her fingers into the wood, daring the fence to splinter and dig into her finger and when it did it didn't matter. Because she was a happy girl, watching her father as he checked their always growing herd.

But then her father had died and suddenly it seemed to Kate that a little splinter could bring on a world of pain. The doctors said it had been a heart-attack, too much strain and stress but she often wondered if that was correct, if it made since that someone could die from being too fit and outside too much. But that didn't matter because all the thinking in the world wouldn't bring him back and Kate couldn't bare the thought of sitting alone on the breaking fence without a world to watch before her. Everything had stopped, the world had stopped.

And her mother had stopped grieving. One day Kate came home to see that her father had found someone knew, the replacement that would run the remainder of their lives. And suddenly Kate wasn't very happy anymore. No one seemed very happy anymore, except for the new man, the replacement, who wore his happiness in the form of a smug smile and a dangerous twinkle that reflected in his eyes every time he watched Kate. Not even her mother was happy anymore; the cracking mask of makeup and dust she wore couldn't hide that fact.

Kate had never been good at hiding anything either, not until she had been forced to flee and hid herself, her life, her lack of happiness from everyone. But before she hadn't been good at hiding and the first time the man, the replacement, had touched her she had told her mother almost instantly. Behind the makeup mask, Kate had wondered if her mother had been crying, but there had been no outward sign of any emotion upon her confession. Aside from annoyance.

Annoyance that Kate was telling stories -something she had always been good at; fantastic tales featuring Annie Smith, the wild frontier girl who rode her horse across the plains, never tied down by anything and always happy- to show her disdain for her sudden new life. Her mother lack of belief, or perhaps unwillingness to believe, had seemed like a silent signal to the replacement that he had done no wrong and that Kate could no longer do right.

That had all changed one night when Kate did what she had believed was the most right thing she had ever done. Abusing her, using her, was one thing but it was quite a different thing when the man, the thing, moved down the line, when he found her sisters. As she had pointed her father's favorite hunting rifle at the thing that pretended to be a man, Kate had been happy and if she remember correctly, she had been smiling when she had pulled the trigger.

For that brief moment, she had been happy again, happy like the girl upon the splintered fence with the smell of dust in her nose and a delicious smile on her face. But Kate realized that the smells and smiles wouldn't last when her mother had screamed and pointed fingers, calling her the enemy, the demon in the house. It didn't seem to matter that the real beast had been slain and that the smiling girl holding the smoking rifle had been happy once. That her happiness had been destroyed.

Whenever Kate tried to remember how her life had been destroyed, her head spun; everything was a blur of deputies, of court rooms, of tears and of forgetting how to smile. It seemed impossible to believe that she had been a happy girl once, that she had ever been a girl at all when now she was suddenly the criminal, another court case, in the care of a lawyer who didn't believe her story over her mother's. With the supposed suspect dead, there wasn't much of a case and Kate looked like an unhappy girl, suffering over and acting out because of the death of her father.

That was why she had to get away. Kate knew that somewhere out there, that girl hid and that if she looked hard enough, ran far enough, she could find that girl again. Running had made her look more guilty and had also made her a fugitive but she hadn't cared, she didn't care. She had to be happy again and that was the only thing that mattered.

And now, sitting on the beach, grains of sand digging into her skin and the smell of salt tickling her nose, Kate tried to remember what it had been like to be happy. Now she wasn't that girl anymore, she would never find that girl again. As she watched the sun sink into the velvet skin, disappearing beyond the sweeping ocean, she wondered if she ever had been happy.

But it wasn't hard to picture her life before the replacement had entered, her life when it had still been a perfect puzzle. Now she only had one piece and that was the piece that Kate would never let go of. The simple, needed knowledge that she tried to fill her head with. And it was because of that piece that she was still Kate, that she was still that girl somewhere, that she knew, somehow, somehow she knew.

She had been happy once.


End file.
